The phonological determinants of tone in English loanwords in Mandarin

This paper presents the results of a corpus study and an online loanword adaptation experiment examining the tonal adaptation of English loanwords in Mandarin. Using maximum entropy models, I control for the substantial influences of lexical tone distributions and standardisation, and uncover phonological determinants of tone beyond these lexical and conventional factors. The most important phonological determinant of tone in the corpus was English voicing, while in the experiment it was English stress-aligned pitch contours. I argue that these distinct tonal adaptation patterns constitute two different perceptual mappings, one from F0 perturbations to tone and the other from English intonation to tone, both arising due to particular borrowing contexts. I suggest that increasingly close contact between English and Mandarin may lead to more intonation-driven tonal adaptation in the latest wave of borrowing. The maximum entropy approach holds promise for the analysis of complex cases of tonal adaptation in other languages.

Number Adaptation Can Be Dissociated From Density Adaptation

Rapidly judging the number of objects in a scene is an important perceptual ability. Recent debates have centered on whether number perception is accomplished by dedicated mechanisms and, in particular, on whether number-adaptation aftereffects reflect adaptation of number per se or adaptation of related stimulus properties, such as density. Here, we report an adaptation experiment ( N = 8) for which the predictions of number and density theories are diametrically opposed. We found that when a reference stimulus has higher density than an adaptation stimulus but contains fewer elements, adaptation reduces the perceived number of elements in the reference stimulus. This is consistent with number adaptation and inconsistent with density adaptation. Thus, number-adaptation aftereffects are more than a by-product of density adaptation: When density and number are dissociated, adaptation effects are in the direction predicted by adaptation to number, not density.

Individual differences in frontal midline theta activity during visuomotor adaptation are related to execution noise

ABSTRACTFrontal midline EEG activity has been found to correlate with error magnitude during motor adaptation. We replicated a previous visuomotor adaptation experiment with very small perturbations, likely to invoke implicit adaptation, in a new group of 60 participants and combined it with EEG recordings. We used this data to explore 1) whether frontal midline activity will be evoked in the absence of awareness of the perturbation; 2) whether frontal midline activity is related to implicit adaptation; 3) whether individual differences in frontal midline activity are related to individual differences in motor learning. The results showed that frontal midline theta activity (FMΘ) is also present during small perturbations, does not drive between-trial error correction, and that the sensitivity of FMΘ to error magnitude was smaller for participants with greater execution noise. This relation between FMΘ-error-sensitivity and execution noise could be fully explained by looking at the relationship between FMΘ and error probability. This implies that frontal midline theta activity represents a surprise-like saliency signal, potentially driving awareness and cognitive control in situations with more salient errors.

The effect of perceptual adaptation to dynamic facial expressions

We present three experiments investigating the perceptual adaptation to dynamic facial emotional expressions. Dynamic expressions of six basic emotions were obtained by video recording of a poser’s face. In Experiment 1 participants (n=20) evaluated the intensity of 6 emotions, neutral state, genuineness and naturalness of dynamic expressions. The validated stimuli were further used as adaptors in Experiments 2 and 3 aimed at exploring the structure of facial expressions perceptual space by adaptation effects. In Experiment 2 participants (n=16) categorized neutral/emotion morphs after adaptation to dynamic expressions. In Experiment 3 (n=26) the task of the first stage was to categorize static frames derived from video records of the poser. Next individual psychometric functions were fitted for each participant and each emotion, to find the frame with emotion recognized correctly in 50% trials. These latter images were presented on the second stage in adaptation experiment, with dynamic video records as adaptors. Based on the three experiments, we found that facial expressions of happiness and sadness are perceived as opponent emotions and mutually facilitate the recognition of each other, whereas disgust and anger, and fear and surprise are perceptually similar and reduce the recognition accuracy of each other. We describe the categorical fields of dynamic facial expressions and of static images of initial phases of expression development. The obtained results suggest that dimensional and categorical approaches to perception of emotions are not mutually exclusive and probably describe different stages of face information processing. The study was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, project № 15-36-01281 “Structure of dynamic facial expressions perception”.

Cerebellar Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Effects on Saccade Adaptation

Saccade adaptation is a cerebellar-mediated type of motor learning in which the oculomotor system is exposed to repetitive errors. Different types of saccade adaptations are thought to involve distinct underlying cerebellar mechanisms. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) induces changes in neuronal excitability in a polarity-specific manner and offers a modulatory, noninvasive, functional insight into the learning aspects of different brain regions. We aimed to modulate the cerebellar influence on saccade gains during adaptation using tDCS. Subjects performed an inward (n=10) or outward (n=10) saccade adaptation experiment (25% intrasaccadic target step) while receiving 1.5 mA of anodal cerebellar tDCS delivered by a small contact electrode. Compared to sham stimulation, tDCS increased learning of saccadic inward adaptation but did not affect learning of outward adaptation. This may imply that plasticity mechanisms in the cerebellum are different between inward and outward adaptation. TDCS could have influenced specific cerebellar areas that contribute to inward but not outward adaptation. We conclude that tDCS can be used as a neuromodulatory technique to alter cerebellar oculomotor output, arguably by engaging wider cerebellar areas and increasing the available resources for learning.

Space Measurement System Design and Space Environment Adaptation Experiment of Commercial Sensor DS18B20

In order to solve the problem of the complexity satellite temperature acquisition network cabling connectivity, diversity in temperature acquisition circuits, low temperature acquisition accuracy, complicated computation of temperature formula and so on. A single bus thermometry technology based on 1-wire commercial temperature measurement sensor DS18B20 instead of the conventional thermometry technology on the satellite was proposed. In the study, the space measurement system based on DS18B20 including the design of measurement temperature circuit, software and reliability was designed, and space environment adaptability experiment system was built to study on the temperature measurement performance and spatial adaptation of the commercial sensor DS18B20 in the space environment. The results show that commercial temperature measurement sensor DS18B20 is accurate in a vacuum environment at-50~100°C; the new temperature measurement circuit design makes the temperature collection network cabling easier, and makes solving formula simpler by directly reading the temperature value.